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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict
"Foreigners and Their Food" explores how Jews, Christians, and
Muslims conceptualize "us" and "them" through rules about the
preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of
eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the
significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways
ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about
the "other." Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways
Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he
demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas
about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the
first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions
to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative
study of religion.
Why "the Muslim question" is really about the West and its own
anxieties-not Islam In this fearless, original book, Anne Norton
demolishes the notion that there is a "clash of civilizations"
between the West and Islam. What is really in question, she argues,
is the West's commitment to its own ideals: to democracy and the
Enlightenment trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the
most fundamental sense, the Muslim question is about the values not
of Islamic, but of Western, civilization.
This book offers a re-evaluation of the emergence, development and
outcome of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Drawing on
interviews with many of the key participants of the peace process,
newly released archival material and the existing scholarship on
the conflict, it explains the decisions that shaped the peace
process in their proper context. O'Kane argues that although the
outcome of the process can be seen as a success, it is not the
outcome that was originally expected or intended by most of its
participants. By tracing the process and highlighting the pragmatic
decisions of the parties that shaped it the work explains how
Northern Ireland moved from conflict to peace. The book concludes
by examining what the implications of Brexit are for Northern
Ireland's hard-won peace and political stability. -- .
There is currently much discussion regarding the causes of
terrorist acts, as well as the connection between terrorism and
religion. Terrorism is attributed either to religious 'fanaticism'
or, alternately, to political and economic factors, with religion
more or less dismissed as a secondary factor. The Cambridge
Companion to Religion and Terrorism examines this complex
relationship between religion and terrorism phenomenon through a
collection of essays freshly written for this volume. Bringing
varying approaches to the topic, from the theoretical to the
empirical, the Companion includes an array of subjects, such as
radicalization, suicide bombing, and rational choice, as well as
specific case studies. The result is a richly textured collection
that prompts readers to critically consider the cluster of
phenomena that we have come to refer to as 'terrorism,' and
terrorism's relationship with the similarly problematic set of
phenomena that we call 'religion.'
State sponsorship of terrorism is a complex and important topic in
today's international affairs - and especially pertinent in the
regional politics of the Middle East and South Asia, where Pakistan
has long been a flashpoint of Islamist politics and terrorism. In
Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia, Prem Mahadevan
demonstrates how over several decades, radical Islamists, sometimes
with the tacit support of parts of the military establishment, have
weakened democratic governance in Pakistan and acquired
progressively larger influence over policy-making. Mahadevan traces
this history back to the anti-colonial Deobandi movement, which was
born out of the post-partition political atmosphere and a
rediscovery of the thinking of Ibn Taymiyyah, and partially
ennobled the idea of `jihad' in South Asia as a righteous war
against foreign oppression. Using Pakistani media and academic
sources for the bulk of its raw data, and reinforcing this with
scholarly analysis from Western commentators, the book tracks
Pakistan's trajectory towards a `soft' Islamic revolution.
Envisioned by the country's intelligence community as a solution to
chronic governance failures, these narratives called for a
re-orientation away from South Asia and towards the Middle East. In
the process, Pakistan has become a sanctuary for Arab jihadist
groups, such as Al-Qaeda, who had no previous ethnic or linguistic
connection with South Asia. Most alarmingly, official discourse on
terrorism has been partly silenced by the military-intelligence
complex. The result is a slow drift towards extremism and possible
legitimation of internationally proscribed terrorist organizations
in Pakistan's electoral politics.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ruled Mosul from
2014-2017 in accordance with its extremist interpretation of
sharia. But beyond what is known about ISIS governance in the city
from the group's own materials, very little is understood about the
reality of its rule, or reasons for its failure, from those who
actually lived under it. This book reveals what was going on inside
ISIS institutions based on accounts from the civilians themselves.
Focusing on ISIS governance of education, healthcare and policing,
the interviewees include: teachers who were forced to teach the
group's new curriculum; professors who organized secret classes in
private; doctors who took direct orders from ISIS leaders and
worked in their headquarters; bureaucratic staff who worked for
ISIS. These accounts provide unique insight into the lived
realities in the controlled territories and reveal how the
terrorist group balanced their commitment to Islamist ideology with
the practical challenges of state building. Moving beyond the
simplistic dichotomy of civilians as either passive victims or ISIS
supporters, Mathilde Becker Aarseth highlights here those people
who actively resisted or affected the way in which ISIS ruled. The
book invites readers to understand civilians' complex relationship
to the extremist group in the context of fragmented state power and
a city torn apart by the occupation.
'This elegantly written, erudite book is essential reading for all
of us, whatever our identifications' - Lynne Segal Antisemitism is
one of the most controversial topics of our time. The public,
academics, journalists, activists and Jewish people themselves are
divided over its meaning. Antony Lerman shows that this is a result
of a 30-year process of redefinition of the phenomenon, casting
Israel, problematically defined as the 'persecuted collective Jew',
as one of its main targets. This political project has taken the
notion of the 'new antisemitism' and codified it in the flawed
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's 'working definition'
of antisemitism. This text is the glue holding together an
international network comprising the Israeli government, pro-Israel
advocacy groups, Zionist organisations, Jewish communal defence
bodies and sympathetic governments fighting a war against those who
would criticise Israel. The consequences of this redefinition have
been alarming, supressing free speech on Palestine/Israel,
legitimising Islamophobic right-wing forces, and politicising
principled opposition to antisemitism.
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